Bandwidth threat as on-demand TV grows

Eyebrows were raised this week when the BBC's iPlayer suddenly lurched towards confrontation. Just two weeks after the video-on-demand software became publicly available, internet service providers were going on the offensive - claiming that they could be forced to throttle such services in order to save bandwidth.

So-called "traffic shaping" measures - restricting the use of high-bandwidth applications - already happens with excessive downloaders, and is used to try to retain the speed of most broadband connections. But the threat to introduce similar measures against a public service such as iPlayer has resulted in confusion and anger on all sides.

Software makers say the ISPs should be running networks that can cope with the demand for video, while service providers are concerned that they are being forced to invest heavily in order to satisfy the commercial demands of others.

One assessment by media regulator Ofcom suggested it would cost the internet industry more than £800m to keep up with the growth in online video. It's a debate reminiscent of the US argument over so-called "net neutrality", and stuck in the middle are the customers who have paid their ISP for "unlimited" downloads and handed over their licence fee to the BBC.

"I pay my ISP for a package that includes unlimited downloads," wrote one commenter, AJWimble, on our Technology Blog. "That means that if I download something from the BBC, I have paid the ISP for the bandwidth I am using so they have no right to complain. On the whole it sounds like this is a case of ISPs complaining because they may be asked to actually deliver what they already advertise."

The situation is made increasingly murky by the fact that many of the providers leading the charge - such as BT and Tiscali - also offer their own internet-based TV services. Some observers feel that it's just an attempt to kill off legitimate peer-to-peer services in favour of their own products - though the service providers reject the accusation.

"Something like iPlayer has the potential to become really mainstream; it's higher quality than YouTube and the downloads are 10 times as long," says Jody Haskayne of Tiscali. "It's 30 times the bandwidth."

The providers can foresee a number of solutions they may be happy with: the main one is revenue-sharing to pay for the cost of transmission, where the ISP in effect takes a cut of the cash made from the download. But while that could work for pay-per-view services like Channel 4's 4oD, it's trickier for the iPlayer, where video is free at the point of delivery.

Either that or, they suggest, people might start having to pay more for their broadband. Given that until now the industry has been focused on driving down prices while simultaneously driving up connection speeds, it is not hard to see why customers are left confused.

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